Sweet success for Celebrations and Maltesers

The increasing promotion of Halloween and themed confectionary sweets has become more apparent amongst UK shoppers year to year.

In fact, the UK’s Halloween industry grew to more than £300m in recent years placing it behind only Christmas and Easter among the country’s most lucrative festivals. But has the occasion provided any uplift to BrandIndex measures amongst brands in the confectionary sector? This year it sparked some success for Celebrations, Maltesers and Twix.

As of 31 October, Celebrations and Maltesers were the brands ranked greatest on Buzz within the Confectionary Sub-brand sector, with scores of +8.1 and +7.5 respectively. Celebrations also experienced a significant increase in Buzz in the week leading up to Halloween of +5.0 points.

Consideration also became more positive for some confectionary brands leading up to Halloween. Maltesers and KitKat had the highest Consideration scores on 31 October at 36.1% and 32.9% respectively. However, Maltesers and Quality Street experienced the largest uplift in their Consideration scores from the week before Halloween, seeing increases of +5.6% and +5.0%.

KitKat and Maltesers were also ranked greatest in the sector on Purchase Intent on October 31st with scores of 12.7% and 12.2%. While Maltesers experienced the second highest uplift in the sector on its Purchase Intent score in the week leading up to Halloween (+2.2%), Twix had almost twice as much of an uplift with a +4.1% increase on its Purchase Intent score in the same week.

This year’s Halloween has helped some of these brands, such as Quality Street and Twix, narrow the gaps in metrics against some of their competitors, while it helped other brands, such as Maltesers and Celebrations, rise above the competition. What remains to be seen is how these confectionary brands will fair in the period leading up to the holiday season.